Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise has become a clarion call to feminists, anti-racism campaigners and to any oppressed group that can identify with the sensation of being written “down in history” and “trod in the very dirt”. It is utilised again in the title of Nottingham Contemporary’s latest group show, Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance. The “still I rise” refers to artists spanning centuries and continents who are protesting and finding alternative ways to live and work.

The exhibition also offers up an alternative way of presenting art. The curators are not just providing lip service to feminism in showcasing work by 40 female and non-binary artists. Rather, they have ditched typical exhibiting systems and hierarchies to allow feminist and intersectional queer thought to direct everything from the ground up.

Each gallery is organised thematically, uniting artists across generations, “feminist waves” and practices. In gallery one, we find evidence of grassroots resistance; in two, there are spells and reinvention; in three, public space is re-examined; and, in four, voices are raised in protest. Beyond the art itself, the exhibition displays have been designed by female collective f-architecture and the catalogue is by OOMK (One of My Kind), who produced a book with rearrangeable pages to allow the reader to structure their own thoughts.

The cross-cultural, cross-creational approach results in an eclectic presentation that sees Xenobia Bailey’s vibrant, crocheted shelter positioned next to Guo Fengyi’s delicate drawings and Jesse Jones’s smoke-puffing millstones. Although they appear entirely different, all three works ponder the benefits of matriarchal thinking. Bailey’s Mothership 1: Sistah Paradise’s Great Wall of Fire Revival Tent utilises the domestic craft skills she acquired from her female family to knit a bold, protective structure against colonialism. Fengyi’s Dunhuang Apsaras II depicts swirling faces within a body to recreate the safety of a child in a mother’s womb. Jones’s ephemeral Oracle Stones exude smoke, music and lights at different interludes to alter the layout of the room, alluding to the potential women have to change social and political structures.

The desire for change is all over Still I Rise. In gallery one, Ramaya Tegegne sticks up pages from Women and their Bodies, a book published by feminists in 1970 featuring detailed images of childbirth, vulvas and sex. Later titled Our Bodies, Ourselves, it was intended to educate women on topics that were rarely discussed, but nearly 50 years later, Tegegne’s display comments on the fact this information is still not routinely taught in schools.

In gallery four, change is demanded in a much more direct way. Eduardo Gil captures photos of protests in Buenos Aires in 1983 over people who had been “disappeared” by the Videla regime. Phyllis Christopher documents the LGBT community in San Francisco in the 1990s, holding up signs stating: “God is a black lesbian.” Suzanne Lacy blends art with protest to produce a performance piece from 1977 that highlighted the lack of media coverage around a serial killer targeting women in Los Angeles. Collectively, these works are powerful, celebrating the communities that have stepped out to pursue change.

It is the collective voice that shouts the loudest in this exhibition. When “Still I rise” is said in unison, a future without patriarchal hierarchies starts to appear out of Tai Shani’s structureless language, Judy Chicago’s colour-drenched landscapes, and Joan Jett Blakk’s run for the presidency of the US – the first black drag queen to do so. It’s a future that still requires artistic imaginings for us to see it.